so far, the detroit farm system is looking pretty thin. brent clevlen repeated a level, and he still has trouble making contact. and his power is only good, not great. the one thing in his favor is he's reasonably patient. patient hitters often show improvement. but he's got a long way to go.

what happened to him in 2004? did he get hurt, or is that year missing? we get our data from the baseball cube. occasionally there are errors.

but anyway what can we say about this 2005 season? it's terrible. low patience, terrible contact. . . . decent power, but terrible contact. why is he a prospect?

i guess baseball america's doing that thing they do where if there are no good prospects in the upper levels they pick some young guys. you might as well. young players improve, sometimes by a lot. all we can do with wilkin is wait and see.

ok, this is not a good farm system. humberto sanchez is decent, but not great. his stuff is not dominant, and his control is not good. and he's had some trouble with the long ball. i don't think he's gonna make it.

tony giarratano is, as they say in the streets, not very good. he lacks contact, and power. he's a shortstop, so he can get away with not mashing, but his hitting is terrible. his defense is good, but his hitting is terrible.

the numbers we have are ridiculous. cons of .463 and .500. 12 innings is not a meaningful sample size, but it's still a lot of strikeouts.

so that's something.

wow, what a disappointment. i can no longer go around saying dave dombrowski is good. i have to say he sucks. this is really getting me down. i mean, have we no heroes any more? what is the world coming to?

Maybe you should learn to read before you attempt to criticize. Also, you may also want to do a little research instead of just reading stat lines to form conclusions.

From the article you ripped, "Baseball America's Top 10 Prospects lists are based on projections of a player's long-term worth after discussions with scouting and player-development personnel. All players who haven't exceeded the major league rookie standards of 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched (without regard to service time) are eligible. Ages are as of April 1, 2006."

See that, "after discussions with scouting and player-development personnel." That means people who are a whole lot smarter than you.

Even if the Tiger's farm looks thin on the surface, you still cannot criticize Dombrowski for the job he has done. Do you even watch the Tigers, or do you just read minor league box scores?

If you had watched any games over the last 2 years then you could have seen that it was blindingly obvious last year that the Tigers were 2 starting pitchers, a center fielder, and 2 setup men away from being a decent team.

Login/Monroe were not the answer in center and either JJ or Robertson needed to be replaced along with a 5th starter. Also, after trading Farnsworth and Urbina they needed some arms to setup for Rodney (instead they got an aging but so far effective closer and a stud setup man). Who could have guessed how big a difference Leyland would make? Tram's only real problem was managing pitchers; apparently there was more wrong with the rest of the staff than anyone could have guessed.

Obviously no one saw this start coming, but Dombrowski has built this team, # 1 in MLB, and has begun populating the minors with quality players.

I love when it when little ignorant people with big mouths get put in their place, and Dombrowski has done that over the first 40+ games.